The Definitive Guide to Business Finance – Contents

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Executives, entrepreneurs, and numbers

The books starts by helping you to suit up with the weapons and armour needed to do battle.

Chapter 1. The journey starts here provides a general introduction to the book
Chapter 2. Where Managers and Numbers Meet reviews this magical kingdom and starts to show you how to use the numbers to your advantage.
Chapter 3. How The Finance Director Thinks takes a ligh-hearted look at the mindset of the professionals with whom you will be dealing.

Attaining mastery over numbers

Next, the book introduces spreadsheets and reminds you about some numerical basics.

Chapter 4. The Financial Wizard’s Toolbox investigates the tools you use to hammer the numbers – primarily spreadsheets.
Chapter 5. Explaining and Reporting provides a refresher about some numerical techniques.
Chapter 6. How money grows describes the basic arithmetic of investment and finance.

Managing money

Forearmed, we can move on to income and expenditure. These chapters show you how you dominate every penny that comes into and flows out of your coffers.

Chapter 7. Keeping Score introduces the rudiments of bookkeeping.
Chapter 8. Managing money reviews the roll-up-your sleeves business of managing petty cash, bank balances, cash flow, expenses claims, debtors and so on.

Look both ways

Now we take a short digression into analysing what has happened and forecasting the future.

Chapter 9. Tracking trends introduces ways of looking at the way that numbers change over time – and how this highlights what is happening to the business.
Chapter 10. How to forecast anything explains how to form a realistic view about potential future trends – with particular attention on forecasting sales.
Chapter 11. Counting capital considers the special factors surrounding capital spending on fixed assets (often huge outlays where there is longer-term benefit and perhaps short-term pain).
Chapter 12. Controlling Costs looks at assessing other spending – the cash that seems to go up in smoke instantly when you pay telephone bills, rent, and so on.
Chapter 13. Getting to gross profit pulls together sales and production costs. This is the link between this section and the next.

Feeling the financials

With all the foregoing out of the way, you are ready to pull together the numbers to produce, interpret, analyze and review the financial scorecards

Chapter 14. Producing a profit investigates income statements, known in the UK and elsewhere as profit and loss accounts. These are just budgets or project plans restated.
Chapter 15. Building a balance sheet looks at balance sheets – misunderstood (to say the least) medical reports about of the health of any business.
Chapter 16. Watching cash flow considers sources and uses of funds – highlighting ways of re-casting the figures already dealt with to give you better management control over cash – and projecting your own cash needs.
Chapter 17. Reviewing reports looks at published financial statements, introducing a couple more financial reports and discussing the blurb that surrounds them all.
Chapter 18. Figuring financials at last gets down to analysing financial statements. The analysis is continued in Chapter 19.

Serious management issues

The next few chapters review financial control of the enterprise – although the topics are every bit as applicable and important at the division, departmental or unit level.

Chapter 19. Financing and investing looks the interesting topic of financing a business, debt, equity, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and the cost of capital.
Chapter 20. Business across borders reviews the increasingly important topic of international commerce, with particular attention on managing exchange rate risks.
Chapter 21. Appraising projects describes how you assess, select and manage projects for financial success.
Chapter 22. Brilliant budgets covers the budgeting process – addressing the control of finances throughout the business
Chapter 23. Better decisions provides some tools to help you make decisions where numbers are involved.
Chapter 24. The finance director did it pulls together the themes running through the book.

The back of the book

The finance director’s language is a glossary of over 500 buzzwords introduced and defined in the text, and repeated here for ease of reference.